Our latest Gender analysis of EPSRC portfolio data: update 2019-20 to 2023-24 provides an update on the earlier ‘Gender disparity in our large grant portfolio’ report, building on the UKRI’s harmonised diversity data and spans the financial years from 2014 to 2024.
Our latest report enables us to monitor the effect of policy implementation and where there may be areas for improvement. In addition, it enables us to continue to evolve our current policies, such as the Mixed Gender Panel Policy (MGPP), focus interventions and help inform our new EPSRC equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) Action Plan, which will be published in 2026.
Some of the key findings from this report show:
- female representation among principal investigators and awardees has gradually increased, though it still lags behind the broader HESA academic population in engineering and physical sciences (EPS)
- fellowship outcomes for women often show strong performance, with award rates frequently surpassing those of men, despite fewer applications and some year-to-year variability
- application success rates for female principal investigators are generally comparable to male counterparts, indicating relative parity in funding outcomes
- postgraduate research (PGR) student gender trends are stable, with female representation slightly below sector benchmarks but following similar patterns over time
- female participation in peer review and decision-making roles is improving, particularly in panels, though some areas such as reviewer return rates and college membership still show underrepresentation
Royal Statistical Society report
EPSRC commissioned the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) to conduct an independent analysis of its research grant portfolio, aiming to identify any potential bias within the peer review process. This investigation involved structured data analysis and textual examination of reviewer comments and scores, the latter carried out in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute.
The resulting report presents the RSS’s statistical findings on diversity across EPSRC’s portfolio and peer review activities.
The evolution of EPSRC inclusive practices and policies
At EPSRC, we are committed to embedding inclusive practices in the way we work to ensure fair decision making and improve trust. These practices include our MGPP, which was introduced in 2016, where we set out our aim for all panels to be mixed gender and with 30% of the underrepresented gender to be represented across all panels in a financial year.
Since our Understanding our portfolio: a gender perspective report (2020) and our equality, diversity, and inclusion action plan 2022 to 2025 (2022), we have been putting in place a range of new practices. These will realise our ambition of creating a more inclusive and welcoming research and innovation environment that benefits everyone across UK engineering and physical sciences research and innovation.
Examples of our new practices are outlined in the following.
Process Panel Advisors pilot
Process Panel Advisors are members of the EPSRC academic community who have received dedicated training to serve on peer review panels in a specialist capacity. Their role is to support panel discussions and interviews by helping to mitigate potential bias and ensure that decision-making processes align with UKRI’s principles of peer review.
Flexible models of leadership pilot
The EDI Hub+ was the first funding opportunity where EPSRC piloted a flexible leadership model, enabling one or more individuals to jointly lead the project. This approach was designed to foster inclusive leadership by allowing team members to contribute diverse knowledge, skills and experiences to the management and strategic direction of the grant.
Strategic infrastructure accessibility plans
As part of our strategic infrastructure funding opportunities, applicants are now required to submit a comprehensive accessibility plan alongside their proposals. For successful applications, an accessibility audit will be conducted prior to the start of the project to ensure that accessibility and disability inclusion are embedded in the outset. To support applicants in developing robust plans, we provide detailed guidance and resources.
Gender diversity in our large grant portfolio
Underrepresentation of women in EPS remains one of EPSRC’s largest EDI challenges, and remains a well-known issue in the engineering and physical sciences community, with gender diversity in our large grant portfolio an area of particular concern.
Building on the publication of UKRI’s harmonised Diversity data – UKRI, EPSRC undertook a detailed analysis focused on gender to better understand the portfolio we support, linking grant size by value to award rates across our standard grants and calls. In 2020, we published our findings in the Understanding our portfolio: a gender perspective report, which covered between the financial years 2007 to 2008 and financial year 2018 to 2019.
The report focused on gender disparity in our large grant portfolio. Our aim in publishing this investigation was to share our findings with the wider EPS community, raise awareness of the trends that we see as a funder, and promote discussion in the community to support positive changes across the sector. The style of the report was intended to support an open conversation with our community.
Some of the key findings of the report were that:
- women are consistently underrepresented in EPSRC’s principal investigator applicant pool across the portfolio
- the number of applications for large grants from women is particularly low
- while award rates by number of grants are similar for men and women, they are not by value of grants
- there are notable differences in the size of grants applied for across genders, with women consistently applying for smaller grants
Findings of the ‘have your say’ community survey and next steps
Alongside the 2020 Gender disparity in our large grant portfolio report, we launched a ‘have your say’ community survey to gather reflections and perspectives from members of the EPS community.
In April 2021, Dr Katie Nicoll Baines from the ‘Evidence Base: Growing the Big Grant Club Inclusion Matters’ project began a secondment with EPSRC to analyse the survey responses with a view to developing interventions to address the key findings.
These interventions were discussed with members of the EPSRC Equality Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Advisory Group and EDI champions from EPSRC’s Strategic Advisory Teams to refine and inform the implementation plans.
The analysis, interventions and implementation plans are presented in the Gender diversity in our portfolio: survey findings report.
The interventions suggested in the report are grouped by the identified barriers and plans for implementation. They are focused on the following:
- time: limited availability, burden of other demands and need for flexibility
- bias in the peer review process
- misconceptions about the grant application process, both pre and post award
The interventions detailed in the report formed a key part of the EPSRC EDI action plan that was published in 2022.